We’ve been in our current abode for 9½ years and it’s served us very well. The problem is that it’s far too large. We chose it at the time because we needed a place that could house us and Bridget’s Mom. It was perfect for that, but we always knew that we’d be moving out after Joyce no longer needed it.

She died three years ago and we’ve been rattling around ever since.

My intent to keep bees for the rest of my life has more or less decided what sort of property we’re looking for: smaller house (current place is almost 3000 sq.ft.), bigger lot (5 acres minimum) and quiet. I need someplace where I can work with as many hives as I want in the yard and not make the neighbours nervous. Is that too much to ask?

Apparently, yes. We started looking really seriously in March and while we’ve only really toured a dozen homes, we’ve investigated many dozens more. Either the land is perfect and the house is wrong or vice-versa. We did see one house that we both liked the house and the property, but it already had an offer on it and it sold shortly thereafter.

We’re both tired of looking. The latest prospect was the final straw: 130-year-old farmhouse, 25 mostly treed acres with the possibility of another business. The maples have been tapped for syrup before and we could do it again. The house is the problem: while it would need to be completely gutted and re-modeled, the price is such that we could deal with that. It’s too small, though. 1300 sq.ft. is less than half the size of what we have. We’re looking for something in the 1800 sq.ft range. The listing didn’t have the floor space listed, and while we knew it was small when we looked at it, we didn’t find out just how small until we’d started mentally tearing out walls and making it our own.

No more house-hunting. We’re going to build. It’s the only way that we’ll get exactly what we want and it’s far easier to find a suitable piece of land.

We’re in the research phase, but it’s about 90% likely that it will be built with straw bales. Straw is effectively a waste material: it’s the stalks left over after cereal grains (wheat, flax, barley) are harvested. There’s no food value in it and the most that it gets used for is bedding in a barn.

When they’re properly prepared and installed, regular stick construction can’t come close to the energy efficiency of bales. Your standard 2×4-framed house has about 3½ inches of fibreglass insulation in the exterior walls. They have an insulation rating (R-value) of 11. A straw-bale wall is between R-30 and R-40 and therefore, is far cheaper heat and cool. There are also little touches like rounded corners everywhere and deep windowsills that add to the attraction.

Never mind the fact that they’re perfectly suited to goofballs like me building them. A house is really just a larger version of the cottage that Pete and I built on Simcoe a few years ago. We’re looking at a building cost under $100 sq.ft. if I, and my willing friends, do what work we can. You can’t beat that. 2012′s going to be busy.

Stay tuned for more developments as we choose the land, figure out plans and get down to construction.

It starts a week from Saturday. The billboards say so:

Somebody’s really serious about this. These billboards are all over North America. There are even 2 or 3 here in Kingston.

Harold Camping, founder of Family Radio.com and the EBible Fellowship, has done the math. Yes, math. Apparently, the bible’s full of equations and when you add them all up they come to May 21, 2011. An earthquake will signal the end times and the rapture will begin. The righteous will be lifted to heaven and those who are left behind will be subjected to 153 days of turmoil. The earth will be completely destroyed on October 21, 2011.

Mr. Camping has made this prediction once before. He and his followers gathered in an auditorium on September 4, 1994 and waited the Second Coming. You might have noticed that it didn’t happen.

He says that he messed up and misread of the hidden codes in the Bible. But he’s certain that he has the math right this time!

I guess we don’t have to worry about December 2012 after all. I wonder if I should bother to pay my bills?

Saturday was absolutely gorgeous. Mid-teens in Kingston and sunny all day. Greg and I delivered two hives to a customer near Perth and it was closer to 24 up there. It was glorious weather to be planning hive locations.

The drive up, about 100km was uneventful, but coming home was another story. We had to come back a different route, and didn’t know it, so I decided to follow the GPS. Thankfully, TomTom lets you submit map corrections, because it decided to send us down here:

The sign warns that it's a seasonal road and not maintained in the winter. "Travel at Own Risk".

We sat here for a couple of minutes to assess out options and decided to go for it. The Tucson’s got good ground clearance and we had time. What could go wrong? 

Water could go wrong, that’s what. the road was partially submerged in dozens of spots and entirely flooded in a few. There was only really one “Should we turn around?” spot, but we forged ahead. Lots of fun and there was lots to see.

The mythical Canadian Beer Tree, for instance:

We're guessing that you have to leave one bottle behind at harvest to ensure a good crop the next year.

There was a strange, two-legged moose as well:

Yeah, I'm not messing with that. I just sat in the car until it went away.

Eventually, we came out the other side. I’m quite impressed that the TomTom had the road mapped so well, but it was definitely not listed as a one-lane bush road with a posted speed limit of 10 km/hr.

Sunday was fun of a completely different sort. Cameron turned 7 on Tuesday and we held his party at the local 5-pin bowling alley. He invited his cousin, Carson, and 5 friends from school and we all had a hoot.

The boy loves his dinosaurs. The hat went to school today for Funny Hat Day.

It may cost $150 to have a party out at one of these places, but I’d definitely qualify it as “worth it”. The activity’s all planned, there’s no getting the house organized ahead of time and at the end of it, you just go home and collapse. No clean-up required. Ahhh.

As it stands, the USDA is responsible for assessing environmental impacts of new GMO crops. The agency has been lax about this, to say the least. In 2005, the USDA gave Monsanto the go-ahead to unleash its sugar beets before preparing an Environmental Impact Statement. This decision triggered a judge to rule that Monsanto sugar beet seedlings should be ripped from the ground.

Since the USDA is so bad at doing its job on time, the agency looked around to see if anyone else was prepared to do its EIS work instead. And so the USDA has at least temporarily decided to hand over environmental impact responsibilities to the biotech companies behind GMO crops. The pilot program will allow these companies to conduct their own environmental assessments of crops or outsource the work to contractors.

That’s right, Monsanto. The company that is being sued by the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association for, effectively, being dickheads in enforcing their patents. They like to sue farmers for having had their crops contaminated by pollen from nearby fields. These guys are now being given the responsibility of determining if their own crops are safe for market.

What could possibly go wrong?

So, we got something of a look at the limestone place yesterday. The outside of it, anyway. Our agent had arranged a viewing for us for today, but called in the morning to cancel. It seems that the homeowner had called her agent to let him know that she was at the airport, going on vacation and had removed the key from the lockbox. She doesn’t want anybody going through the house when she’s away. She also didn’t know when she’d be back. Sigh.

But, at least she was cool with us walking the property. It’s wonderful. There’s a small ravine behind the house, with a good-sized creek running at the bottom of it. There’s a bridge. There are clearings, dense bush and open treed parts.

We didn’t check out the whole place, 22 acres would have taken all day for a quick peek, but we did blunder around for 30 mins or so. It’s perfect for bees: loads of nectar sources and trees aplenty for propolis collection. There’s even some great spaces for tents if the boys so wish.

What we could see of the house looks really nice. In fact, it appears that there are already bees there. Unfortunately, they’re inside one outer wall and will have to be removed. I can do it, but it’s not something that I enjoy and it will come up in any negotiations. Thankfully, it’s one wall of the addition (wooden siding) and not the main house (limestone block).

In the meantime, back to working on our current house. I must admit that It’s a load of fun to get rid of crap that’s been piling up for years. I’ve taken two runs to the dump already, for a total of 1200kg of junk. It feels great!

First, some background: I grew up in Kingston. I’m a child of the city, but I have very deep country roots. My Mom is a farmer’s daughter and I spent massive portions of my child and young adulthood helping out at Grampa Gordon’s farm. Over my lifetime, he was into cattle, pigs, rabbits, sheep & goats at various times and he had ponies throughout. There was a llama at one point, but the details are a bit foggy. 

My brother and I had a hand in shearing sheep, cleaning horse stalls, mucking out pig pens, feeding rabbits, watering and feeding all of the animals, you name it. Grampa didn’t suffer any fools and you can be sure that while it wasn’t all work, it sure wasn’t any picnic. Especially haying in the summer. It was hot, sweaty, allergy-irritating, back-breaking work, but I loved it. Why? Because even though I was a kid, I was doing something that mattered. Real work.

What do I do with my life now? I fix computers, troubleshoot network connections and coddle academics. If you’ve seen Big Bang Theory, you’ve seen what I work with. It’s not fiction, it’s a bloody documentary!

I’m fairly certain that diving into beekeeping in such a big way is an attempt to “do something with my life”. My way to make a lasting impact on the world. Beyond raising two boys, that is.

We’ve been in our home since Dec/01, but it was always planned as a way-station. We chose this place for its unique layout. It gave us the space that we needed, but it also gave Bridget’s elderly Mom her own space and privacy as well. The house is far too large for a family of four: it’s a five bedroom bungalow, with three bathrooms. Huge. The plan was to stay here as long as Joyce needed it. She died in 2008, so it’s time.

It’s time for a change. I’m tired. Bridget’s tired. We all need a change. I’m tired of driving home for 30 minutes and still being stuck in the city. I’m tired of being within spitting distance of my neighbours. I like our neighbours, but not that close. I want to start raising our own queens for the hives, but that requires regular visits to the hives that I’m working with and the neighbours get all freaky when I walk out the door in my suit and veil.

So, we need land. One big criteria is that we be outside of the City of Kingston. Primarily because I really don’t want to give our property tax money to those buffoons any more, but also because the more rural municipalities tend to be more friendly to agriculturally related businesses, such as apiculture. Especially considering that we’ll be having the land re-zoned agricultural post-haste. 75% cut in property taxes that way.

So, we’re off to look at a place this weekend. 1840′s limestone, two storeys, three bedrooms, creek in the back yard and 22 acres of mixed hardwood bush. Sounds like heaven to me. The amazing part is that it only took 17 minutes to drive there last night after B got off work. It can be twice that long to get to the ‘burbs now.

I’ll keep ya posted.

What the non-Scouters amongst you may not know is that I just finished the second level of Scouts leadership training: Wood Badge II. Yay for me. The first level, Wood Badge I is mandatory within the volunteer’s first year. It’s more or less an introduction to the hierarchy and traditions of the movement. It used to be taught over a weekend, but you can do it online now. Participants receive a leather two-strand turk’s head woggle.

WBII gets more into meeting planning, strategies for handling groups of kids and some resources. It’s often done over the course of a week in the summer, but this one was one weekend in each of Feb, March and April. Nothing online here: the last weekend is all about outdoor skills.

Scouting is an organization that thrives on tradition. A very large portion of what we teach and do still comes from the movement’s founder Robert Baden-Powell. ‘BP’ for short. BP recognized that everyone who wanted to be a leader already had the skills and knowledge to best do the job. So, he started organizing leader training within a couple of years of the first camp in 1907. The Wood Badge itself wasn’t first offered until 1919.

Upon completion of the course, you’re presented with a new necker and two wooden beads on a leather thong. The necker represents your honourary membership in the 1st Gilwell Scout Troop. Based at Gilwell Park, England, the location of the first Wood Badge course. The beads are a BP special. The story goes that he wanted to present a distinctive award to these leaders for their dedication. The original beads came from BP military days:

The origins of Wood Badge can be traced back to 1888, when Baden-Powell was on a military campaign in Zululand (now part of South Africa). He pursued Dinizulu, a Zulu king, for some time, but never managed to catch up with him. Dinizulu had a 12-foot (4 m)-long necklace with more than a thousand acacia beads. Baden-Powell is said to have found the necklace when he came to Dinizulu’s deserted mountain stronghold. Such necklaces were known as iziQu in Zulu and were presented to brave warrior leaders.

The beads are now made of oak, but the significance is the same. The necker carries a patch of MacLaren tartan to honour “a British Scout commissioner who, as a descendant of the Scottish MacLaren clan, donated money for the Gilwell Park”.

Like I said, tradition is the engine that drives much of Scouting.

So, one February weekend I and two other leaders from our group trekked to Camp Opemikon in the wilds of Lanark County. It was cold, but the accommodations were good (heated cabins), the food was excellent and you always have fun when a bunch of Scouters get together. This one was a bit different from others. They’re usually done one section at a time, but the organizers decided to make this a super-course: there were Scouters from Beavers, Cubs & Scouts, as well as Venturer advisors.

We had 18 Cub leaders, which very nicely split into three “sixes”. Ours hit is off so well, that I’m honestly surprised that we didn’t get sent home for goofy behaviour right off the bat.

March was a similar affair, except the furnace in the dining hall decided not to work very well. Given that all of our sessions were held there, wearing a parka indoors for the weekend got old in a hurry. It was damned icy outside and I’m surprised nobody broke anything. I managed to bruise my elbow (the bone itself) slipping on a patch of ice on the Sunday a I was heading back to the cabin to pack. It’s been a long time since I’ve slipped so completely as to have my feet go higher than my head, but I did.

April (last weekend) was a different affair altogether. Being the outdoor skills weekend, we weren’t in the cabins, but tenting it. No problem, my big sleeping bag is rated to -15C. What looked to be an issue was rain. On Wednesday last week, the forecast was calling for a Friday night low of -7C and highs of 5C with rain during the days. Oh joy, oh bliss.

Friday came and it only went down to 0C or so. Other than a breeze blowing across my face all night, I was toasty warm.

The weather on Saturday, to put it bluntly, sucked. It may have gotten as high as 5C at some point, but not until late afternoon. Rain, followed by a rain/snow mix, then sleet, then hail, then more snow, then rain again. Plus the wind. So much wind. Two big problems: all of the sessions were outdoors and the most activity was moving from one station to the next. Second problem: even though it’s been quite wet lately, Lanark County is under a total fire ban. No open flames, so no campfire to warm up at.

Thankfully, we have Kevin in our group. He was able to borrow one of those tents that you see the phone company set up in the winter as shelter when they have to work outside in nasty weather. He also brought a catalytic propane heater. Instant sauna and it really came in handy for a number of folks who were heading towards trouble in the cold.

The best news came when the organizers decided to open the cabins up to us. Not more than 6 or 8 slept out. Cold is fine. Cold and wet? Not so much.

But, we all survived. I also made a bunch of friends. I draw a very distinct and hard line between friends and acquaintances: an acquaintance will help you move, a friend will help you move a body. :mrgreen:  Now, don’t panic. I haven’t had a move a body in a very long time. LOL

In a lot of ways, the contacts and friendships are the most important part of this sort of exercise. We’re all trying to do the same thing: present our youth with a program that they enjoy and fulfills the needs of Scouting. We all have different ideas and skillsets and comparing notes is invaluable.

In fact, when I came home, I was able to tell our contact leader that we’d already partly planned next fall’s camp. Two of the other Scouters are with 150th Ottawa Cubs (Candice, below, is one of them) and they regularly camp at Camp Oskenonton, a camp that we’ve been meaning to get to more often. We and our 20+ youth are going to link up with them and their 6 or so.

They’ve bloody well sucked me back into Facebook, though. They’re all on it, so I wound up re-activating my account. Argh.

Janet Anderson, one of our trainers and a local Scouter, braving resisting the urge to strangle me with my own necker.

Trouble to the power of 3. Two of my partners in crime: Candice on the left and Nathalie on the right. Nathalie and I weren't sure that we were going to get our beads. "Are we being marked on behaviour?" Janet confirmed that there were questions. ;-)

What that’s resulted in is a renewed vigor in getting my family back on to the straight and narrow, food-wise.

Overly processed crap is going to disappear from our kitchen. I already refuse to buy industrial meat. I buy pork from a local farmer and I know that she treats her livestock extremely well. Beef comes from my in-laws.

A change of households is in progress and the plan is to channel my Dad and grow a load of veg. After years of not really having the gumption to garden, I got interested enough last year to do it. Thank you Tom Pawlick and Michael Pollan. The two of you have me so concerned about the future of the food supply that I’m becoming a latter-day Mr. Greenjeans.

In the short-term, I’m researching granola bar recipes. Nathalie told me about seeing a dietician who took one look at the label of her granola bar and pointed out that of the almost 40 ingredients, only four were food. Gah

h/t to Randall at xkcd

Does anybody really know what the issues are? I mean, the real issues. Not the ones that the politicians would like to have front and centre. The ones issues that really matter.

Right now, the primary thing on my mind is fervently hoping that Harper and the Conservatives do not win a majority. Their behaviour in the last Parliament was anything but honourable and rewarding them with unfettered power would be a massive mistake. Very few of the rest of them are really much better, but Mr. Harper has the dubious honour of being the first sitting Prime Minister in the Commonwealth to be found in contempt of Parliament.

Think about that for a second. Canada employs the Westminster system of Parliament, as does much of the rest of the British Commonwealth. It’s been in use for hundreds of years and not once, anywhere on Earth, has a sitting government been found in contempt. Until Stephen Harper, the 22nd Prime Minister of Canada, took the reigns.

In truth, he’s more of a Libertarian than a Conservative. Since he came to power, he’s been systematically dismantling the government as he sees fit.

• Nobody in the Conservative caucus is allowed to comment to the press without permission.
• We’ve completely abandoned any leadership role that we might have aspired to in environmental protection. The Climate Action Network gave the Harper government the Colossal Fossil award at the 2010 Copenhagen summit!
• We’ve run screaming from the leadership role that we’ve had for decades on human rights issues. We’re the only Western nation that left one of our citizens in the US gulag at Guantánamo Bay. We left a child soldier to rot in their torture facility.
• He shut down (prorogued) Parliament not once, but twice, to avoid losing a confidence vote.

I’m so viscerally offended by the way that this guy does things, I can’t fathom why anybody supports him. Can you imagine a US President going out on a campaign and refusing to take a single question from voters? He doesn’t even plant people to lob softballs.

Anyway, I’m rambling. Impolitical keeps a careful eye on the man and his agenda.

Other than rewarding Harper for his arrogant, divisive, politics, I don’t care who runs the country. I just want things to get done. In a manner befitting Canadian Parliament. Stop behaving like toddlers who’ve missed morning snack, sit the hell down and cooperate. You people disgust me and I know I’m not the only one.

I will most definitely vote, though. I went to high school with Ted Hsu and think he’s the best man for the job locally. He’s a great guy, knows the issues and cares. The other choices are a former auctioneer who loves to hear the sound of her own voice, the perennial Green Party candidate who seems hell-bent on sabotaging his own campaign (Streetcars? Is he insane?) and our NDP candidate whom I also know to be a great guy, but doesn’t have the support locally to win.

I’ve never been one to vote strategically, but I think it’s more important than ever to think carefully before casting one’s ballot. Will you be doing more harm than good? By voting for Eric Walton will you just be helping Alicia Gordon squeak in and give the Conservatives one more seat?